Thomas Heaphy

Heaphy was articled at an early age to R. M. Meadows the engraver, and attended a drawing-school run by John Boyne near Queen Square, Bloomsbury.

He devoted much of his fortune to developing land in the neighbourhood of what is now Regent's Park, and a portion of St. John's Wood owes its origin to him.

He then established the Society of British Artists, of which he was elected the first president, and to its first exhibition, in 1824, contributed nine works, but he resigned his membership the following year.

[1] Heaphy exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1797, and until 1804 his contributions were exclusively portraits, but in that year he sent a subject picture, The Portland Fish Girl.

In 1807 he became an associate of the society, and in the same year a full member; his Hastings Fish Market, exhibited in 1809, sold for five hundred guineas.

[1] In 1812, giving up his membership of the Water-colour Society, Heaphy went at the invitation of the Duke of Wellington to Spain and the British camp in the Peninsular War.